“Apple’s iPhone 5s announcement included a surprise leap to a new 64-bit ARM chip architecture, a subject that has sparked lots of confusion and misinformation,” Daniel Eran Dilger reports for AppleInsider. “But the secrecy surrounding the A7 may also have fooled analysts into slashing their sales expectations and downgrading the company’s stock targets.”

“A variety of details are still unknown about Apple’s A7 implementation. This includes exactly what CPU cores it is uses (it may be a extension of Apple’s custom Swift cores in the A6, now implementing the 64-bit ARMv8 instruction set, or it could be either a stock or customized version of ARM’s Cortex-A50 series cores); how many CPU cores it uses; and what GPU cores it uses (new support for OpenGL ES 3.0 suggests it uses Imagination Technologies ‘Rogue’ Series6 GPU design),” Dilger reports. “It’s also not known for certain who is fabricating the A7, despite mounting evidence suggesting that production may have shifted from Samsung to TSMC.”

“Back in June, Jefferies analyst Peter Misek reported that Apple had cut production orders for iPhones, based on his ‘inventory checks.’ Misek didn’t detail all of his research, but he did specifically note one reason for believing that Apple was cutting its iPhone orders. ‘Our checks also indicate,’ Misek wrote, as covered by CNET, ‘that Apple’s wafer starts at Samsung’s Austin fab have likely been cut,’ Dilger reports. “We don’t know that Misek’s understanding of Apple’s ‘wafer starts’ in Austin were accurate, but if they were, there’s more than one reason for that to occur.”

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19 Comments

So let me see if I got this right…
Apple introduces something completely unexpected, a 64-bit chip no one else has, surprises the analyst who have complained all spring and summer that Apple has lost it’s innovative way and do not have anymore new innovations anymore. Apple does it, but because they were surprised (no 64 bit processor rumor leaks) they downgrade the stock (also because they decided that 5c stands for low cost)…

Makes complete sense if you want to destroy a good company for short term gains… Oh wait, that’s exactly what they do.

Also, analysts downgraded the stock because they do not know what CPU cores were used? If it is stock or custom? How many cores it uses? They do not know who is fabricating it? Really? THAT’S what they are basing their downgrades on? Nothing but more stock manipulation.

Well being the fact this is the first 64bit processor for a mobile the analysts probably have no idea what that means long term for handheld computing. Again Apple is setting the stage but Wall Street needs to play catchup and learn how advanced this technology really is and what it means in real life befits to hand held computing. I bet if google did an analysis of the search ” 64 bit processor” in the wall street area id bet they would find quite a bit of hits for these tools to learn what it means for their trading..

Please stop. Wall Street doesn’t care one iota about Apple’s long term prospects for changing the smartphone industry.

Wall Street is myopically focused on making profit over the next hour or so, not tomorrow, the next day, one week or one month from now. Change the paradigm for smartphones? That’s something to make money with on some later date, but for today, it’s about making money on how they bet Apple’s stock would perform (or get pushed) right after the event.

Wall Street has ZERO interest in how a company did, is or will perform or profit. It is SOLELY interested in when is the proper moment they either buy or sell so they make money — THEY — not Apple.

… “must-follow”. I accidentally sold (set stop-loss at 1% rather than 10%) and she got out near the recent “top”. So, now I have some money to buy back in. After the tax man gets paid, anyway. Must do my maths again … my calculations suggest that number was reached today. But it seems to be still dropping.
Soon, though …

So I’ll go ahead and adopt a completely contrarian viewpoint: I think the analysts fully expected Apple to price the 5C where Apple did price it, just like every phone before it. But publicly they let fly rumors of lower cost, developing markets, etc. And bought puts all the way to the bank when Apple did exactly what they knew Apple would do.

Is Jefferies analyst Peter Misek a flaming stock manipulating criminal?
It seems that no matter how wrong or stupid they are, the funds do short term sells and use options to profit on moronic “analysis”.

So why would Apple do two things. Create a 64 bit cpu with this many transistors and move motion off the chip. Were there not rumors about laptops moving to an ARM processor? Could this be a continuation of that rumor?

As if it would make *any* difference to the vast majority of analysts whether Apple advertised the technical minutiae of its A7 processor! I doubt that many of the popular hack analysts would know the difference between “Apple’s custom Swift cores in the A6” versus a “stock or customized version of ARM’s Cortex-A50 series cores.” Some people are willing to dig a pretty deep hole in an attempt to explain the historical behavior of the stock market.

“…the secrecy surrounding the A7 may also have fooled analysts into slashing their sales expectations and downgrading the company’s stock targets.”

Substitute “analysts” with “NSA” and you might have a better idea why this would make any difference at all to Wall St.

Thinking tin foil head gear? Read further:

“A variety of details are still unknown about Apple’s A7 implementation. This includes exactly what CPU cores it is uses (it may be a extension of Apple’s custom Swift cores in the A6, now implementing the 64-bit ARMv8 instruction set, or it could be either a stock or customized version of ARM’s Cortex-A50 series cores); how many CPU cores it uses; and what GPU cores it uses (new support for OpenGL ES 3.0 suggests it uses Imagination Technologies ‘Rogue’ Series6 GPU design) … It’s also not known for certain who is fabricating the A7, despite mounting evidence suggesting that production may have shifted from Samsung to TSMC.”

Now after reading that, ask yourselves the simple question of what financial institution could possibly be concerned with such things, if their own concerns were simply financial? Answer – none. The reason why this arcane stuff concerns Wall St ‘analysts’ is because it concerns NSA analysts. They can’t begin even attempting to crack something without knowing the basics of what it is and/or where to get access to it.

The Street and the government are essentially one and the same now. And when the government can’t get what it wants from a country or corporation, it uses the Street to make them pay. Literally.